MHI Alaska :: A Dish Served Cold Pt III

The world exploded in thunder and fire, then went dark.


Something stabbed at Buck's neck. A cold icy pain, creeping down his spine.

It felt like...snow.

Buck was buried in snow.

Gingerly, he pulled himself up.

Laid out before him was a holy terror of blackened, shredded tundra, tossed snow, and cooked rancid dog.

Oh GOD what a smell...

Something flashed at the edge of his vision.

Buck looked up to see the double wings of Lucas' Stearman pulling up into the sky. The airplane did a quick low circle around him, and Buck could see a passenger wave down to him. The aircraft waggled it's wings, and started back for camp.

Buck bent to pick up his rifle, then started the long trudge back to join them.



****



“Dynamite?! You dropped DYNAMITE on me?!”

The pale dusk of an Alaskan midnight filtered through the tiny window of the small hunting cabin, barely large enough for the three men. Lucas McKinney grinned wide as he filled the small dirty glass and set on the table in front of the young hunter.

Buck was still pacing the narrow confines of the cabin - the ten mile walk back hadn't done much to ease his nerves. He glared down at the older man seated at the table.


“Of course I didn't drop dynamite on you," purred the man a thick Boer accent. "... I dropped dynamite in front of you.“


".. Where did you get DYNAMITE?!" Buck's nerves were starting to coalesce into anger.






Lucas broke in quickly, picking the glass back off the table and forcing it into Buck's hand.  "Road crew had some cached up by the Copper. We didn't think they'd miss it."  He nodded as Buck tossed back the whiskey. "Lucky we caught up to you. You find that lost trapper Mae was talkin' about?"



Buck sighed, and held out his empty glass for a second shot.
“Found him alright. His dogs went Zulu. Team tore him to pieces up by Baker’s Creek.”



“Damn. Anything else?”



Buck’s face darkened.

“Yeah...do we have any more of that dynamite? I think we’re gonna need it.”




… to be continued.

Next installment

is written, but needs copyediting. Sorry for the holdup y'all - it'll be up this time tomorrow night.

MHI Alaska :: A Dish Served Cold Pt II

NOVEMBER 14, 1934
ONE WEEK FROM MCCARTHY
WRANGELL MOUNTAINS, ALASKA



Too close!

Buck hunkered lower into the snow, trying not to mind the colt wet that slowly seeped through the elbows of his woolen jacket.

Three hundred fifty yards away, the remains of the sled team sniffed around what was left of the old miner. The dogs’ flesh hung off their bones in raggedy strips - the warm fall had really done a number on them.

He hated it when the Zulu bug got loose on sled teams - there wasn’t a more sorrowful sight in nature than once-friendly pups dripping their guts out and dragging down anything that moved.

Not many things more dangerous either. They were used to men. Men had always meant food.
… they still did.


Buck thought he'd be okay though, as long as the wind didn’t shift...

…. shit.

The first dog raised its gnarled head, sniffing the air.

Don’t howl don’t howl don’t....

The dog somehow still had enough air in its cracked and tattered chest to let out a howl. The cry echowed eerily around the broad canyon, and the rest of the team rasied their heads.

shit shit shit....

Buck raised his 1903 NRA Sporter, pulling it tight to his shoulder. Wind was quartering away, range 350, a little downhill, and....

The rifle jumped, and almost in the same instant the lead dog rolled into the dirt.

Other heads raised to sniff the air, and the pack broke towards him.

This is such a bad day.

Buck worked the bolt fast, and leaned against his sling for the next shot.

Hit.

Three rounds left. Seven more dogs. Now two hundred odd yards, at a run.

This wasn’t going to end well.

Damn!  His next shot went into the dirt, two yards shy of his target.

Two rounds left. A hundred and fifty yards. God those things could run fast.

Focus...focus...

Hit!

Seventy-five yards. One more shot.

Briefly, Buck wished he’d thought fast enough to unsling first so he could swallow that last pill himself. The next half hour wasn’t likely to be over quickly.

Make it count, make it count...

*click*

Oh hell no.
no no no no...

oh god look at that dog his teeth are cracked and I think I see his heart and is that a .. oh shit this is going to hurt ....

…. to be continued.

MHI Alaska :: A Dish Served Cold

So Friend Paul has been our resident MHI guy, and mentioned wanting to enter Larry's Patch contest. Figuring that anything worth doing is worth doing well, I present to you -

MIDNIGHT, OCT 30, 2011
PETE'S LANDING, CHITINA RIVER
WRANGELL MOUNTAINS, ALASKA


The mountains loomed high over the glacial river. Their sheer cold mass dwarfed the scratched airstrip off one bank, where one old Cessna ticked and popped in the cooling air. Nearby, the orange glow of a single window shone out alone in the night.


The wind seemed to slice right through the walls of the old homesteader's cabin, cold and wet off the glacier. Snow had been falling on and off for the last couple weeks - winter was going to set in hard this year, and soon.


Jake hunched over the old iron stove, stirring the fire inside to brighter life. He pulled off his old Carhartt work coat and tossed it to the table.


His niece Jamie reached out and picked it out of the air, grabbing it to her lap.
Her finger traced the patch on the shoulder, and for a moment stared into those evil red eyes looking back at her. Now the stitched figure of a skeletal moose seemed almost family - but she remembered how as a girl she'd close her eyes and run past her father's pack in the closet, terrified those eyes might see her.


Shaking off the memory, she looked up.
"So Uncle J - tell me about the moose here."


"What moo... oh, Harvey? Sweetie, you've heard that story a hundred times!"


"Sure - but I think Rick would like to hear it."
She grinned back at the new addition to the team, a PI fresh from Outside.


Rick looked up from the .454 he was cleaning, and raised a dubious eyebrow.
"... Harvey?"


"Yup. He's real. Well, was. Big ol' guy." Jake leaned over to peek out the tiny window, checking the moon's crescent.

"I reckon we've got some time yet.."

He leaned back, kicking up his feet to rest on the log wall.

"So there was this little dustup in my Daddy's time, back in the territory days...."

To be continued...

Frontier Pasgetti

... While eating down the pantry, I just discovered that if you heat it enough to drain off most of the fat, pemmican makes for a right nice base for a spaghetti sauce. Took a little getting used to - but it was actually good. Very "steak-y" texture. Good thing to remember - a decent ground beef substitute that can sit for weeks or months on the shelf is kinda cool.

I mentioned it to a friend of mine, and promptly got gushing praise for biltong. Guess I'll have to try it sometime soon. She's sending recipes. :)

Fish in a barrel

So after last year's visit to Colonial Williamsburg with my Dad, I've been on their mailing list.

Usually that amounts to a sale flyer or the like popping up in my email box. Every now and again a survey.

Yesterday, though, I came home to find a DVD from them sitting in my mailbox! Seems they'd just finished a restoration of the 1957 film "Williamsburg: the Story of a Patriot." As a particularly impressive fundraising direct mail piece, they'd send copies of it out to their mailing list.

I put it on while relaxing with a bit of sewing this evening. Very 50's. But fun.

The best bit of trivia? When they were filming the movie in the late 50's, they used locals for extras. Now women and children were easy to find, but who could they get to fill out the state house? Who could play all the politicians in town, and yell and posturing while Patrick Henry gave his speeches? All the men of the town were at work, and could hardly spare the time to play movie actor for weeks on end.


There was however a state mental hospital in town...






... you know, I don't think I even need to finish that post. :p

Kitchen knife

Since everyone has been showing off their sharp and pointys, I figure this is a good time to post a birthday present we all got together for a friend of mine up here.

See, she's a brilliant cook - even translating her own recipies out of a medieval cooking book! A..um... medieval Dutch cooking book if I recall right. Smart cookie.

For years she's been going far out of her way to help everyone with everything, often to great personal cost. So we all figured it was time to make her a little token of appreciation:

The knife is by Blacksmith Chris. Sharp sharp!

The sheath I made - the design I poked out mostly with an awl made by Dear Friend Travis (that man is *such* a handy piece of work). Former SCADians will recognize the device at the bottom. It seemed appropriate.

The finish though is what was fun. I'd been playing with an old finishing technique I was pointed to in some old book or another - a mix of neatfoot oil and beeswax. It's all in the ratio - more oil and you get nice soft supple leather. More wax - especially if you heat it - and you get a stiff piece not unlike modern leather finishes. The neat thing is how that wax just seeps through the leather, so the surface buffs up *nice* and pretty.

Anyhow, off to work. Happy Wednesday all!